Guest essay by Eric Worrall

In the face of the embarrassing failure of European renewables to reduce CO2 emissions, greens appear to be ramping up attacks on the alleged climate impacts of natural gas.

America’s liquefied natural gas boom may be on a collision course with climate change

By Matt Egan, CNN Business
Updated 2301 GMT (0701 HKT) July 1, 2019

New York (CNN Business)

America’s liquefied natural gas boom has a climate change problem, according to a report released on Monday.

The US energy industry is scrambling to build dozens of expensive export terminals that can be used to ship cheap natural gas to China and other fast-growing economies that want to move away from coal.

While those investments make sense today, they will likely be derailed in the longer run by a combination of plunging renewable energy costs and rising climate change concerns, according to the Global Energy Monitor, a network of researchers tracking fossil fuel projects.

Those dual forces will make many LNG projects “unprofitable in the long term,” putting much of the $1.3 trillion of investments in the sector at risk, the report said.

The problem is that the LNG boom will create harmful methane emissions — a greenhouse gas that is roughly 30 times more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions. Both coal and natural gas produce CO2 emissions, though natural gas creates far less than coal.

…

Rather than fossil fuels like gas, Nace argued that the long-term growth opportunity will be solar, wind and other alternatives. 

“This century will be owned economically by whoever manages to dominate renewables,” he said.

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/01/business/lng-boom-environment-climate-change/index.html

I think it is kind of sweet of greens to put so much effort into warning fossil fuel investors they’re about to lose all their money.